I still continued laying out and hiding myself from place to place, fully intending to leave the country just as soon as I could settle my business; and I even made several appointments of times that I would go, but some way, or somehow, there appeared to be a supernatural power which controlled my every action, and I could not leave the vicinity of Mobile. During that fall and winter my brother John and I made two trips from Big Creek to Catahoula to hunt for that money, and the last trip we made I was prepared to leave. Brother John had left the principal part of his money at home, and had to go back after it, and he prevailed on me to go with him. We returned to the vicinity of Mobile, where I loitered away my time for some month or two, and it seemed that my mind in some way became confused and impaired, and I took to drinking too much spiritous liquors. One day, some time in the spring of 1849, my brothers John, Thomas, Isham or Whinn, and I were at a little grocery store near Dog river, about twelve miles from Mobile. I drank too much spirits and became intoxicated, and in that situation I imagined every man I saw was trying to arrest me. I fell in with a man by the name of Smith, an Irishman, and a difficulty occurred between us; I concluded that he intended to arrest me. I drew my double-barrel shot gun upon him and intended to kill him. He was too quick for me; he threw up my gun, drew his dirk and stabbed me just above the collar bone. The wound did not quite penetrate the cavity of the chest, or it would have killed me; I threw down my gun and ran about two hundred yards and fainted. My brothers then carried me about two miles, and one of them went home and got a carriage and took me home. Smith went to Mobile and told the news. A party came out and tracked me up by the blood, and arrested and carried me to Mobile jail. I was now in the worst situation I ever was in in my life. One indictment against me in Alabama for larceny, and another against me in Mississippi for murder, and the requisition of the Governor of Mississippi then in the hands of the officer to carry me there to be tried. The question was which trial to avoid; if found guilty, as I felt certain I would be, in both cases, one would be the penitentiary for not less than four years, and the other would be hanging. I employed the best counsel that could be procured in Mobile, and on consulting with him and making him fully acquainted with all the facts, he advised me to plead guilty of the larceny and go to the penitentiary of Alabama; “for,” said he, “you may stand some chance after your four years are out to make your escape from the clutches of the law in Mississippi. They may not think to file their requisition with the Governor of Alabama in time, and in that event, when your time expires, you will be let loose.”